Time to take a modern approach to business acceptance

Accounting Today (December 13, 2019) – Like many elements of running a successful accounting firm today, the process for evaluating and onboarding new clients can be improved by an order of magnitude with modern technology. Specifically, the solution set a firm uses to manage data has an outsized impact on the speed and effectiveness of its business acceptance process. And improving that process, in turn, has a net-positive effect on the bottom line. After all, the faster and “cleaner” a firm brings on a new client, the sooner it starts realizing revenue.

While this scenario seems like common sense, it’s not the reality for most firms in my experience as someone who oversees the accounting and risk practice area for a professional services technology provider. This is especially true for firms outside of the Big Four and what I call the “Next Four” (though some of them qualify as well) that bring in millions — or even billions — of dollars in revenue yet still rely on legacy technology stacks and manual, inefficient processes to onboard new clients. Taken together, these factors can put a significant drag on firm profitability.